Posted
by
Unknown Lameron Tuesday May 22, 2012 @08:06AM
from the never-seems-like-a-good-launch-date dept.

zacharye writes with an excerpt from BGR: "The new 'six strikes' anti-piracy policy soon to be implemented by a number of major Internet service providers in the United States will reportedly stumble out of the gate. The policy, which is set to be adopted by Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and other ISPs, will see action taken against users caught downloading pirated files in six steps, ultimately resulting in bandwidth throttling or even service suspensions. The system responsible for managing the new policy may not be ready on schedule, however, and the targeted launch date of July 12th may slip back as a result..."

I was wondering why I stayed with Charter recently, until I realized that I had no fucking choice unless I wanted to downgrade to shitty 7 meg DSL.

These guys better be hoping and praying (and dumping a metric shit-ton of money on our reps) that they never lose their local monopolies, because once they open up the lines like they did with long distance telephone service in the 90's they're going to see their enormous profits fucking evaporate overnight as customers give these guys the finger and go with someone that isn't gouging the fuck out of them.

because once they open up the lines...they're going to see their enormous profits fucking evaporate overnight as customers give these guys the finger and go with someone that isn't gouging the fuck out of them.

Here's how I see that going:

New ISP: Heya Charter, how much you charging for Internet in this area?Charter: An arm and a leg.New ISP: Hmm. We don't have your speeds, so how about WE charge an arm and a leg. You can raise your prices, say add a nose and eyeball, and still advertise you're faster.Char

I was wondering why I stayed with Charter recently, until I realized that I had no fucking choice unless I wanted to downgrade to shitty 7 meg DSL.

Well, your circumstances may be different than mine: you may have a large family with each member using two devices and/or services at the same time, but I'm on 6 meg DSL and watch YouTube while listening to KSHE on one PC while the the notebook is torrenting Linux distros and stuff, and I never get a stutter out of any of it. If your circumstances are similar to

I was with Comcast and had a 15 mbps connection but typically 150-200 ms ping in our apartment building. They advertised the crap out of the download rate, but I felt like I was on a satellite sometimes with the ping.

We moved to a home in a new neighborhood that's only serviced by Qwest. I was initially disappointed by the drop to 7 mbps and really lousy upload speed, but I do take comfort in a very consistent = 60 ms ping.

For many practical purposes, cutting the ping from the really lousy 1/5th-1/7th of a

Even if they do "open the lines", they still own the lines. They'll still fear accountability and still mandate throttling/packet inspection.

The only way to get around this is if these new players lay their own lines or come up with a wifi/sat service that actually works. But then those still need to connect to backbones owned by someone else. And eventually the media corporations will lobby hard enough to get all their dirty work done upstream.

You don't have to be affected by someone's ideals in order to be against them. I wouldn't make friends with someone who went out to beat up people of a certain skin colour, even though I'm not liable to be one of his "targets".Why should it be any different for companies?

Calling this a hate crime is a bit much. Maybe we need a new Godwin's law. Mind you I don't like this either, but an ISP stopping attempting to curtail illegal activity is different from a racist beating up a person of color.

That depends on too many different factors to list. Sometimes you don't have a choice and you're stuck with using a company you don't necessarily agree with - many slashdotters here hate Microsoft but have to use Windows in some form because their views don't warrant them moving jobs.Using my original analogy, I wouldn't befriend that person because I have many friends and don't need any more. If he and I were the last people alive, I'd probably have to make an exception and work with him.

And don't forget what affects many of us which is family. Sure YOU might not have a problem moving, but could you afford or even get the family members to move as well? in my area its Cox cable or AT&T DSL and that's it but while my GF would love it if I could move closer to her family the simple fact is i have two elderly relatives with health problems as well as a 17 year old child with serious health problems and his older brother is swamped in pre-med. if anything bad were to happen he just wouldn't

This process is called "compromise", and many people need to relearn what it entails.

I've been fortunate, over the past 7 or so years, I've been almost windows free, only needing to run it in a VM on occasion to support a project, but otherwise being windows free. My ideals of not using a subpar OS were realizable due to a combination of circumstance and personal effort, yet I still had to compromise occasionally.

The problem with these companies is that they comprise almost all the options for service in

Wasn't the bulk of the fiber backbone they all plug into paid for by taxpayers in the 90's during the Dot Com bubble? Maybe the people should be charging them similar fees for the bandwidth running along those pipes that they charge their end users...

herpa derp! because fiber optics are basically free to run over long distances right?

Last year, Comcast reported "$14.3 billion in revenue in the quarter that ended in October, a 51 percent increase over the same period last year. Net income rose 4.7 percent to $908 million and operating income rose 35 percent to $2.6 billion, driven by 261,000 new high-speed internet subscribers."

So those "fiber optics" are not only free, but happen to be putting a whole shitload of money into Comcast's pockets. The way I

Just because the data can move easily through Comcast's fiber network doesn't mean Comcast doesn't have to pay its own upstream ISPs (Tata and Level 3) for transit. That's why Comcast and other wired ISPs impose a cap on home subscribers, so that the ISPs don't have to overpay for expanding upstream capacity [slashdot.org].

TemplePilot, you don't know if clonehappy is a curmudgeon and has no life, or if he just thinks your post sounds like the ramblings of an adolescent fool. You do realise that you're liable to get modded flamebait for "you're a curmudgeon & you have no life" and overrated for "Big whoop".

Yes, language evolves, but "herpy derpy" is a de-evolution, not evolution, and IS AN INSULT: "Describes a person who usually adds retarted remarks or statements to a conversation."

Don't they mean users "accused" of downloading? As it seems to me, all that is required is an accusation by some asshole MAFIAA goon. It's not like they actually prove their accusations or anything.

Agreed. I've gotten exactly ONE infringement notice from my ISP (Cox Cable), and it was for a TV show I've never pirated.

I see 2 problems with the 6-strike policy:1) There's no incentive for an ISP to do this -- it will lose them paying customers without benefit.2) Since Cox has a monopoly on fast internet in my area and I require it to do my job, they'd be looking at a lawsuit if they improperly cut off my service based on untrue accusations.

He's one of those people who thinks his IP address and Gmail cookies shouldn't be conflated with real evidence. Roommates and friends have left their computers open around me all the time -- or used to, till I made sure they learned from their mistakes -- and I could easily have torrented something or done anything else questionable and it would be impossible to tell that it was me and not them.

and all of those other things. People will go where they can't be traced as easily and download all that they can, then local establishments will take the hit, and then when all those options are gone, some unsuspecting family will be hit next because I didn't configure their wireless connection to be secured.

I don't agree with pirating, but I feel this is also just going to backfire.

This is probably why the implementation date is slipping. The ISPs might be waking up to the shitstorm that comes when they roll this out.

I wonder how much government bailout money we will need to pay in extra taxes once the ISPs lose the large majority of their customers and income...

If supposedly 50% of people pirate just software [slashdot.org], that alone will result in the ISPs only having 50% of their current income.Throw music and movies into the mix, and it would not surprise me if that number was over 75%.

Well, knowing that big ISPs are planning on roamming wifi networks for their subscribers as a next step to "increase coverage". I'm thinking they will be running coffee shop wifis and tracking you down anyways.

People will start using more encryption and private filesharing networks to get their media. I already see it happening at universities, where students who are accused of downloading can face punishments without any sort of a trial. Eventually you will see people moving to things like Freenet.

There are two interpretations:

Old businesses die in the face of new technology -- and good riddance to bad rubbish.

The MPAA continues to profit, because downloaders are also their best customers.

Haven't you realized that's what they want? To shut down the Internet?

They don't say it outright, but they very much wish it was 1985 for the rest of us, when less than half the population had a home computer, and the hard drive, if present, was 20M, mp3 didn't exist yet and even if it had the hardware of those days couldn't decode it in real time, and what little data exchange there was happened over 1200 bit/s modems on local BBSes, a few of which participated in FidoNet. Music piracy was possible but limited and inconvenient, with the cassette tape being the best way. They themselves are quite happy to reap the benefits of modern technology, they just don't like the rest of us being able to do so too.

Don't agree with pirating? Futile, and dated of you. Might as well act disapproving of skirts above the ankle, and shocked over the licentiousness of 60's Rock and Roll. What do you think when you run into some senior who is still upset over Elvis the Pelvis? Who thinks the young are all depraved and they and the nation are going to Hell because of the music they listen to and their general disrespect for the traditions that made the country great. You roll your eyes at their cluelessness, that's what. And you ignore them. Dismiss them as a typical "get off my lawn" senior. No use talking to them.

Sharing is here to stay. No amount of force or cajoling will put this genie back in the bottle. Today, you still have lots of company. You and people of similar mind are why ISPs dare to even think of giving in to Big Media to engage in such idiocy as these 3 or 6 strikes efforts. You disagree with the means, but not the goal. That's enough of a green light for them. Often, means and ends cannot be so easily separated. 20 or 30 or 50 years from now, such attitudes will look utterly ridiculous to most everyone, like asking for sunshine without the heat and acting as if that's such a perfectly reasonable expectation that it need not be spoken aloud because that would be insulting to others' intelligence. "You know, something beggable but not leprosy, which is a pain in the ass to be blunt and excuse my French, sir." If you want to stay relevant, you'll have to accept piracy.

There is a bug in the protocol for WPS - Wifi Protected Setup - which makes it pretty easy to crack. WPS (with a broken protocol) was required by the Wifi alliance if you want a nice sticker on your box (and as a manufacturer you do). Some router firmware won't even let you turn it off.WEP, old but still needed for some very old clients, is also trivial to crack.

So, there are two currently known semi-trivial ways to get on a huge subset of "protected" Wifi networks. If someone were to log on to your networ

And then shortly thereafter you'd have lawmakers telling everyone with a public access point to log MAC addresses, which can easily be tied back to a specific device and thus a specific user much more precisely than you can with an IP address.

In Linux at least, changing your mac address is trivial (ifconfig "device name" hw ether "new mac address"). The problem with that, and everything else they are doing, is that the real criminals will still be two steps ahead of the law, but the common people (their best customers) will pay. Crazy long-term business plan.

amost every pc and router i've seen in the last 8 years has the option to change the mac address.

How does that work? I thought the point of MAC addresses was that they were unique? I suppose, or IP traffic they only need to be unique to their subnet, but still, that sounds like a potential problem for routing (though perhaps no more than assigned IP addresses).

The MAFIAA monitor bittorrent swarms and are already sending infringing notices, which only reference sharing, not the downloading part... I have stopped using Bittorrent for anything but legal downloads or if I am in a cafe or mcdonalds with wifi, where it cannot be traced back to me.

They are ISPs. They can put it in their TOS that the account holder must ensure that no copyright infringement takes place through the account. Voila, the account holder is now responsible - not to the copyright holder but to the ISP. Lucky coincidence that the ISP also happens to be a media conglomerate.

They can put it in their TOS that the account holder must ensure that no copyright infringement takes place through the account

How can an ISP reasonably expect a subscriber to ensure this? For example, say the subscriber is a songwriter, and he posts videos of himself singing songs he wrote. How can he make sure that those songs aren't by accident substantially similar to some existing song?

a US judge ruled that you cannot identify a "pirate" using an IP address

That judge was merely ruling on a legal matter; he wasn't ruling on business strategies. You (as well as ISPs) are still free to suspect anyone of anything, for any reason. Nobody can ever take that away from you. (We still even have racists, you know.)

The policy being discussed isn't a matter of legal punishment or liability; it's about previously-for-profit businesses opting to give inferior service to some customers, based on.. w

There may be illegal sharing. Or making available. Just not downloading.

Of course the "Industry" wants to plant a meme -- "illegal downloading".

Since there is no such thing (as illegal downloading(*)), usenet groups have been cut first (because usenet clients do NOT upload as they download). Peer-to-peer systems upload from clients, which is why they got hit.

MegaUpload? A shot across the bow -- and the service ended up being legal.

Advice: Turn off sharing in your bittorrent client, unless you are sure that you can distribute the material.

Or fetch the material from usenet, ftp, or other "one-way" means. Do not post the material on Web Sites, ftp servers or usenet -- do not make it available for download.

Unless you live somewhere more enlightened, of course (Personal Copy Exemption in Canada, for example).

Or enable encryption on your torrent. Most torrent clients have an option for encryption, most of the time it's set to 'prefer encryption' but you can set it to 'require encryption'

What would that accomplish? The MAFIAA is not capturing your packets and analyzing them to see what you are transferring. They are one of the clients that you are seeding to. Once they download the song and capture your IP address, the start the paperwork. There are solutions to this, but encryption of your data stream is not one of them.

"The MAFIAA is not capturing your packets and analyzing them to see what you are transferring. They are one of the clients that you are seeding to."

Then block your whole country with a special Peerblock list and connect only with the other 193 ones.It might slow down the stuff that only US people watch (Football, baseball, DWTS etc) but for the rest it works OK.

This will only serve to improve online privacy and anonymity technology, making it more robust, resilient, and secure---putting these companies and their attacks on Internet users in the same category as any other online criminals, right where they belong.

We have stuff like Truecrypt that, with a proper key, is pretty much uncrackable.

What happens when we have a filesharing client that reaches this apex? All it takes is some dedicated kid at Caltech or MIT or Basement U to come up with something that would basically be untrackable. Would the government make a completely legal program illegal? Massive spying?

It's going to happen and it will be interesting to see how its handled. I'd pay a hefty sum of money to see the face of the MAFIAA execs when a tech guy

As has been pointed out in earlier/. submissions, the logical conclusion of "The War On Piracy" is to ban the all-purpose computer. Only computers incapable of running software not from a MAFIAA approved app store should be allowed. What's that, you say, you have "research labs" and "universities" where they "write software themselves"? BAN THEM AS WELL! All those college kids are pirates, anyway.

What's that, you say, you have "research labs" and "universities" where they "write software themselves"? BAN THEM AS WELL! All those college kids are pirates, anyway.

No, what will happen is people will be required to have special, expensive licenses if they want to run "real" computers. Universities will be able to pay for these, and of course the corporations who buy the licensing legislation in first place will be able to afford them. Two classes of people: The well-to-do and well-connected who can affor

The artificially limited computers will be hacked and there will be open-source hardware. Computers have been around for too long, the damage is done. Anyone who tries to get in the way will be trampled -- possibly resulting in great short-term hardship for the citizenry, but in the long run I don't see how we can lose.

TOR, TOR, TOR! The more people who use The Onion Router [torproject.org], the better. There will need to be some brave souls out there to run Exit Nodes as they will be the ones targeted if, or when, accusations begin flying.

If they try to ban TOR in the United States, we _ALL_ simply stand up to our government and say "WHAT?!? I was under the impression the United States government espoused a belief in Freedom and Democracy for all people. Why do you think I run TOR? I do it to support those people who wish to communicate freely and throw off their oppressors! Since you are trying to ban TOR in the United States, , I presume you no longer support the struggles of those people who are being crushed by oppressive regimes? It seems to me, , that you actually want to turn the United States into an oppressive police state where the individual is much less important than a corporation, in violation of the Constitution of these United States. Didn't you swear an oath to uphold and defend said document?"

Never give them a chance to bullshit their way out of it. Hit them hard, hit them fast, and keep hitting them with the "So, you work for the corporations now? You certainly are no longer representing the People." and so on. Hey, if they can use "Think of the children??" then we, the People, can damn well use all of the above to get them to back down.

Well shit. Between "...ban TOR in the United States," and ",I presume you no longer..." as well as between "It seems to me," and the ",that you actually want to..." there should be (Senator, Representative, other politician) listed but it vanished because I used greater than and less than symbols instead. Whoops, sorry about that.

TOR is not actually as secure as you seem to think it is. When I was doing grad school, we regularly discussed current research, and it wasn't uncommon for us to find papers disclosing holes in TOR that any significantly large enough group could exploit fairly easily with varying degrees of success. Governments and ISPs are large enough to find people if they want to, and they likely have, since there was an example of a TOR-using criminal ring getting broken up [slashdot.org] just two months ago.

While it is possible that someone could be tracked despite TOR, the example you give is unlikely to be one of those cases. The example given was a narcotics ring, as narcotics can not (yet) be sent through TOR, it seems more likely that they were tracked through their physical product than through TOR.

I can agree with you that it's less likely that they were tracked that way. Nevertheless, the fact that the FBI is being cagey about how they caught the criminals, and the fact that we know that these methods could and do exist, means that we cannot discount the notion that they got around TOR.

TOR will be quickly broken if it gains widespread usage. The FBI has already demonstrated the ability to trace its 'anonymous' users when it's serious about a crime (such as controlled substance distribution centers as linked in Anubis's post).

The methods they've developed so far will get a lot more development if TOR is perceived as a real threat to somebody with political power.

TOR, TOR, TOR! The more people who use The Onion Router the better. There will need to be some brave souls out there to run Exit Nodes as they will be the ones targeted if, or when, accusations begin flying.

You first.

There are many reasons why Freenet, Tor, etc., do not reach critical mass.

Too complex. Too slow. Too obscure.

But I've come to suspect that the ultimate reason may be is that the geek expects someone else to take the big risks for him.

The traffic routed through your systems and networks. The data resident on your hard drives.

Perhaps we should consider the nuclear option. This would be to simply destroy these big telecoms and labels that won't stop attacking internet freedom because of some copying. They are not hurting for money despite piracy and they pay the artists little, leaving the bands to survive on performance only.

Step 1. Free CD/DVD day. People all over the world burn all the music they can find onto DVD and CD-R's and pass them out on the street or leave them in places for people to find like bus seats, subway seats. Stick them in newspapers and free auto or rental property booklets you find at grocery stores and shopping malls. This will spread things around and cripple these goons financially. This will target the RIAA since they are the worst offender. Send a strong message by demolishing the last 3 or 4 big labels and leaving the RIAA in total ruin. Avoid hurting any indie labels if possible. We will need them later.

Step 2. For movies, push hard for a "Steam" like solution where you can buy once, redownload if you lose a copy and run it on any player. The MPAA members can go with this or they can face the fate of the RIAA. I think given that choice, they will go with the steam method and find that it actually increases sales and profits, especially on older stuff that can be put on sale at times.

Step 3. For music, it would be good to see a community form where most music gets shared freely and the artists make a living from live performance. They already do this now, the difference is that they rely on the big labels recording studios and for distribution. The internet can handle distribution easily. Just share. Bands would hire local micro studios to record in and let the experts there do the mixing and other work involved in polishing their album. Since tech is cheap now you don't have to be a multi billion dollar label to set up a studio. You just need some enthusiasts with know how and a few thousand dollars in computers and other equipment and local bands can come record for a reasonable fee. Production is cheap. CD burners, usb sticks and the internet. The band lives off of t-shirts and performance like today. The difference? No big labels to kowtow to and sign your rights away to forever. I think that is a win-win for everyone except the RIAA. The smaller indie labels will form the first micro-studios used by local bands to record.

Step 2. For movies, push hard for a "Steam" like solution where you can buy once, redownload if you lose a copy and run it on any player. The MPAA members can go with this or they can face the fate of the RIAA. I think given that choice, they will go with the steam method and find that it actually increases sales and profits, especially on older stuff that can be put on sale at times.

Have you heard of Ultraviolet? I don't *want* a steam-like solution. I want something that's guaranteed to continue to work no matter how many companies go bankrupt in the next 20 years. I would much rather have DVD and Blu-Ray, although I would like for it to be legal to make my own backup copies. Sure, if you always get a free streaming copy with purchase of physical media that's fine with me too.

Burn a cd/dvd/br disk day. We can all gather in the city centre and march in a circle while we throw our disk into the fire. Free Red Bull for anyone who brings in a media exec for the throw a media exec into the fire toss event.

The idea of "common carriers" is going out the window. Now, anyone who provides a network is going to be responsible for what their customers use it for.

That would be like holding government responsible for car accidents, since the government provides the roads. Obviously, this is a very different system, since the users of the roads are legally and financially liable for their use. It should be no different for any other infrastructure.

ISPs could push back and set themselves as common carriers if they wanted to, but the temptation of selling content to their customers in addition to dumb pipes is just too tempting.

Comcast - planning (or already has) their own streaming music service, and owns NBC UniversalCablevision - has a streaming video service, and also makes their bread and butter off of Cable TVVerizon - sells TV via their FiOS bundlesTime Warner Cable - Not associated with Time Warner Media anymore, but any time spent on the inter

the thing about this system though is that they are not being "made to" they are CHOOSING to. this is not a legally mandated thing, it's a bunch of big ISPs who decided to screw over their customers for the fun (and profit) of it.

These kind of stories always draw half-cocked comments, spewed (along with flecks of Doritos) from the basements of parent-owned houses.

You can talk big, but you're not going to stick it to Comcast when you don't even pay the bill.

The rest of us just get on with our lives, using BitTorrent to grab an episode or two of a show the DVR missed. Occasionally we suck down entire seasons and don't worry too much about it. We leave a wireless "guest network" open and shut down torrents when we hit a 1.0 ratio. We h

In addition to these appointments, CCI announced the retention of the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”), a global leader in conflict management. AAA will be the independent entity that manages the program’s independent review process, including the training of neutral reviewers for situations where a subscriber has received multiple alerts but believes a mitigation measure should not be imposed.

The usual procedure for this organization in other activities is to require substantial up front payment just to get things started. How this would play out in the case of this program is not specified. But it is likely to require the accused alleged infringer to initiate the process through AAA which could cost hundreds of dollars paid in

From PKI (Phil Zimmerman) to the present citizens, we lose to organized crime sustained by Congress, corporate-welfare laws, corporate-enforcers, Cleric-truths, and plutocrat courts.

This ain't the USA, of our founding parents, that I grew up in. Republicans, Libertarians, Religious Inquisition Party (RIP) and other non-thinking dogma-hogs have made it clear that "America belongs to them," not US.

Should corporations be provided with congressional laws that eliminates due process and/or require corporations

1) P0wn the neighbors' wi-fi access points*2) Install script that causes access point to act as a proxy for your own downloading3) Download six or more copyrighted works via each neighbor's IP address

Within a few days, you could be the only one left in your hood with an unthrottled internet connection. Woo-hoo, no more choppy Netflix streaming during prime time! And you get a bunch of free IP to boot.

I guess they mean "friendly" as in "those two were getting friendly [urbandictionary.com] last night" or "that movie exec thought copyright infringement was "content theft" [copyrightinformation.org] and also had an annoying boner, so he got friendly with everyone's internet traffic in the hopes he could catch one of his films' sex scenes".